Vorkosigan

I know very well who Jaki is, and I also know what his goals are.

Bede

Let me drop in here very briefly to flesh out a couple of Vork’s points.

The mechanical worldview is something that we can link to Christian metaphysics. The world as organism was the mainstream view of the ancient Greeks and achieved a considerable renaissance thanks to humanists in the fifteenth century. Robert Boyle started off as a devotee to the Paracelsian/Hermetist view of the world as organism before ditching it in favour of the mechanical philosophy. His reasons were specifically religious. He was concerned that a living universe was independent while a machine, clearly, requires a creator:

The social space for science was carved out at the universities of the Middle Ages. These were institutions safeguarded by the Church which gave them freedom from local secular concerns (up to a point, anyway). Furthermore, theology was not allowed to form part of science (although the opposite was acceptable) so science obtained a high degree of autonomy.

I’m not sure I agree with Vork’s point about capitalism, at least not until much later. I’d suggest that the main commercial uses of science before the sixteenth century were astrology and medicine. Mining and metallurgy had little to connection to learned science, at least until Agricola’s De re metallica in the mid-sixteenth-century. It was the military, rather than bankers, who first picked up on the use of science when they started thinking seriously about projectiles. Galileo was not the only one employed by the Venetian arsenal.

But, capitalism was a driver behind the development of shipping that made the voyages across the Atlantic possible. The voyages themselves tended to be royal ventures as no merchant would take such a risk. Oddly, I’ve seen less theological angst over the New World than you might expect. This is partly because it dawned on Europe much more slowly than you might expect. It was also because ‘Bible as scientific text’ was a rare idea at the time. Medieval and early modern scholars assumed the Bible was intended for a readership of ancient Hebrews and told them nothing they didn’t need to know. It was also written in everyday language. Even today’s most fundamentalist Christians have inherited parts of the figurative tradition (not believing God has hands, for instance).

I don’t think we can say the scientific method came from Islam. That too, would be way too simplistic. Rather, the West was like a sponge, open to a mass of outside influences to which it added its own (primarily Christian) seasoning. Technology from China, numerals from India, method (IMHO) from Greece, metaphysics home grown, government from the Steppes.

You cannot say that Christianity as of in itself was a necessary cause of science. However, you can point to Christian ideas and Christian institutions that had an important positive impact. That in itself dismantles the old and well-loved conflict hypothesis. Thus, when asking the question, why did modern science happen in Western Europe, Christianity is a big part of the answer in part because it didn’t do the damage that many other metaphysical systems have done to science in other places.

This is all extremely complicated. Jaki and Stark veer too far in the opposite direction from Draper and White to get to the real answers. On the other hand, as polemic intended to pull society away from the simple-minded conflict model, they might be helpful.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede’s Library – faith and reason

Vorkosigan

Well, I was thinking of all those scientists from Copernicus to Newton who worked on money/coinage problems......

Lots of things happened all at the same time, and sorting out causation is a bit tricky, especially since we don't have any good detailed models of human cognition and long term fundamental cultural change.

Vorkosigan

lpetrich

Meaning that we are talking about ideas that had little connection with the New Testament or the early Church Fathers. As Richard Carrier has noted, "How come all my encyclopedias were full of the beautiful, wonderful things of the universe, yet not a single peep about them from the Son of God Himself? One would think he of all people would have had a kick ass science education, having the most powerful and knowledgeable father in the universe and all." Elsewhere, Richard Carrier, noted that the Jesus Christ of the Gospels can hardly be called a philosopher, because his arguments are mainly one-liners, the Pharisees are depicted as pushovers, and he does not have much interest in the question of what is a valid argument. And he doesn't seem to have done any controlled experiments, like Francesco Redi's classic one, let alone explain how to construct one.

Also, I think that the believers in a non-mechanical Universe, a Universe with a soul, could easily claim "Christian" justification, that a mechanical Universe, a Universe without a soul, would be beneath God's dignity to create or whatever. But it does seem like an ingenious theological coup, to sneak in what might otherwise be dismissed as "Epicureanism". And as Carl Zimmer had noted, "To say that the mind was matter in motion, as Thomas Hobbes did, was a scandalous thing, because it threw into doubt centuries of received wisdom about the nature of the soul. Bishops would rail again the 'mechanical philosophy,' worrying that it reduced people to machines."

judge

That perhaps one should first read Jaki to understand his arguments.

Any religious nut can slag someone off without responding to particulars, as one moderator here has done WRT to Jaki.
Why Infidels would want to use this approach is a mystery.

Toto

Are you assuming that Vork is a moderator? Or that he is not familiar with the particulars of Jaki's argument? Or that Jaki does not have an obvious bias? Since even Bede admits that Jaki has gone too far, what would justify the effort of reading him to refute him for the casual observer?

judge

Read him if you want or don't read him if you don't want.
It seems fair that if one wants to criticise then one should read first and then attack the arguments not the person.

How otherwise is one any better than a religious nut?

Apologies I had thought Vork was a moderator.

Vorkosigan

judge, for future reference, my background was in the sociology, history and philosophy of science and technology. I have no idea why you thought I had never read him.

Vorkosigan

judge

I did not say you had not read him but I wondered what problems you had with his arguments.

If he is wrong then why is he wrong?

lpetrich

I find it curious that some people celebrate as "Christianity" what might better be called "deistic materialism" or "deistic naturalism".

It is a rather pathetic "triumph" that requires denying important parts of one's traditional creed, notably, miracles.